Sony’s Green Laptop (Literally)

VAIO W Series.

At the Consumer Electronics Show, Stan Glasgow, the head of Sony Electronics in the United States, alluded to the arrival, in a not-too-distant future, of a laptop capable of rendering three-dimensional video. As it was, though, he settled for four new Vaio notebooks, each with its own personality. Here’s a brief look at each of them:

• W series “eco-friendly” Mini. We won’t call it a netbook, though that’s pretty much what it is. The angle is that the green-tinted (we get the hint) plastic enclosure is made of 23 percent recycled CDs (from overstocked Sony artists?), and that the carrying case is made of recycled plastic bottles. The 10-inch screen is LED-lit, and it runs Windows 7 Starter edition.
• Z series lightweight. Called an ultra-portable by Sony, the aluminum-encased Z is about three pounds and ships exclusively with solid-state drives, up to a 512-gigabyte model. It starts at $1,900 and can go way up (a Blu-ray player is optional, as are Intel Core i7 and i5 processors ) from there.
• F series. The latest entry in the multimedia entertainment portable space, the F has a just-right-for-movies 16.4-inch screen and likes to stay at home on a desk.
• Y series. This is the semi-lightweight (four pounds) MacBook fighter that delivers up to seven hours of battery life and incorporates a 13-inch screen. Starts at about $800.

Sony showed off a slew of other new products beyond the new Vaios, including new Cyber-shot digital cameras and camcorders, home theater audio systems, and an intriguing touchscreen Internet viewer for the desk called the Dash.
Mr. Glasgow also said that Sony would now market SD (secure digital) memory cards, even though it has long been pushing its propriety flash storage technology, the Memory Stick. Mr. Glasgow said the decision was prompted by the need to “give consumers a choice.”